Comment by rafram
2 days ago
Public transit isn’t supposed to have a financial “ROI.” Are highways expected to turn a profit from tolls?
2 days ago
Public transit isn’t supposed to have a financial “ROI.” Are highways expected to turn a profit from tolls?
The libertarian answer is yes highways should. Most self proclaimed libertarians refuse to go that far - if you allow for highways to not make money then transit shouldn't be held to the higher bar.
I always find this a dumb idea. Transportation networks enable things to happen that comes back as taxes, that is. Same for education, or other public services.
Fair, but how unprofitable should they be? -$5/passenger-mike? -$12/passenger-mile? I think we can do a lot better than the current US mass transit status quo.
In 2022, the NYC Subway budgeted about $0.75 per passenger-mile (and that was during Covid, when ridership was very low) [1]. You’re really overestimating how much public transit costs to run. Private vehicles are an extremely inefficient way to move people around, hence the cost of Uber/Lyft/taxis.
[1]: https://data.transportation.gov/Public-Transit/2022-2023-NTD...
That's a useful data set. Thanks for sharing.
NYC is special in that it's one of the few places that subways make sense in America. That said, operating costs are common but extremely misleading way to measure transit costs when new tunnel costs $2.2B/mile.
3 replies →
NYC is special in that it's on of the few places that subways make sense in America. That said, operating costs are common but extremely misleading way to measure transit costs when new tunnel costs $2.2B/mile.